1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an apparatus generating a 3-dimensional image from a 2-dimensional image and a method thereof, and more particularly, the invention relates to an apparatus generating a 3-dimensional image by adding a shade in an outlining area of an input 2-dimensional image and a method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Photoshop, which is marketed by Adobe Systems and widely used around the world, adopts a method of filtering an image in RGB or CIE-Lab format to convert a 2-dimensional image into a 3-dimensional image. According to this method, a user has to manually make adjustments to the direction of illumination and the gains during conversion to a 3-dimensional image, and as a result, there has been a problem that characteristics of the true 2-dimensional image are not represented in the converted 3-dimensional image. Also, although the image can be represented in a 3-dimensional image after the filtering, it is only possible in a black and white image. Meanwhile, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, the graphic tool for LINUX that also employs the same method as that of the Photoshop, is only able to convert a 2-dimensional image in RGB format into the 3-dimensional image.
Rather than converting an original 2-dimensional image into the 3-dimensional image based on the illuminative effect of the original image, the above-mentioned graphic tools create new images from the original image as the user manually selects the illumination direction and gains. Therefore, in case of moving images (moving pictures) the illumination direction and gains have to be adjusted manually for each image, and further, the above-mentioned graphic tools are also not provided with functions like blurring and noise prevention. Accordingly, representation of moving pictures in 3-dimension can be very difficult and not practical using such typical methods.